As the drama with West/Zampella continues to play out with Activision, the business of making and publishing games continues with the West/Zampella-led Respawn Entertainment and publisher Activision.

Many fans of West/Zampella had been looking forward to (what was rumored to be the first peek) at what has been in development at Respawn, but instead we heard that the developer is not going to be showing anything or doing any press related to the new title that is in development.

While Respawn community manager Abbie Heppe confirms that Respawn will have boots on the ground at E3, none of what these folks will be doing will be related to the new title that is in development. Our take is that the news is pretty surprising, and we have a hard time believing that not giving gamers a glimpse of what Respawn is working on is a mistake. We have to believe that Respawn needs to stay relevant, and not knowing what the developer is working on can’t last forever.

While sources confirm to us that development continues on whatever they are working on, little is known beyond the fact that it is an FPS title and that it takes place in the future. One theory that we keep hearing over and over again is that Respawn can’t yet announce anything because what they are working on is for the next generation of consoles beyond the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3; and with those having yet to be officially announced, Respawn has nothing it can talk about. We view it as an interesting theory, but only time will prove if it is true or not.

Bugbear Entertainment, developer of the new Ridge Racer Unbounded, has admitted that they are considering addressing complaints about the game’s control scheme. However, the developer seems to feel that the problem is due to their failure to explain how the game’s braking technique operates.

The developer thinks it was partly caused by the cutting of a planned tutorial explaining the control scheme for the title. Sources tell us, however, that it apparently existed in developmental builds of the game and was taken out right before the final builds of the game.

The tutorial was cut due to the developer’s belief that it the tutorial over-explained the control scheme and seemed to get in the way. Besides, as the game developed over time and the control mechanics changed, it apparently became difficult to continue updating and revising the control tutorial. In the end, they might have been better off to have left it in the game.

Now, the developers are going back to the drawing board to see whether it would be possible to add a more interactive tutorial back into the game in a patch, or perhaps revising the control scheme altogether. While nothing has been confirmed or decided yet, Bugbear is definitely looking at the problem and wants to figure out a solution.

All of these problems with the control scheme and drifting have really had an impact on the scores, and taken what the developer intended to be a straightforward game and made it much more complex than necessary. Some believe that the problem stems from the fact that the developer was trying to incorporate realistic physics into an arcade racer.

Bugbear also seems puzzled why the focus groups that play tested the game didn’t have more trouble with the brake button, drifting, or the entire control scheme. We certainly expect that they will be taking a look at their play testing in the future.

As things stand right now, they are not sure what they are going to do; but sources tell us that we should expect them to do something pretty quickly. It is hard to predict, however, what that something might be or how long it might take for them to get this completed. The end result is that the issue needs resolved, and sales are going to be lost until it is.

After such a successful launch of Alan Wake for the PC on Steam, Remedy is teaming up with Legacy Interactive to distribute a boxed release of Alan Wake for the PC in North America. Currently, the boxed release is only planned for the North American market, but that could change in the future.

The boxed version for the PC will start hitting shelves on April 3rd. The boxed offering for the PC will be similar to the Steam offering, in that it will contain both The Writer and The Signal DLC packs as part of the offering.

The decision to release a boxed version of Alan Wake for the PC took a lot of effort and was still a bit unexpected after the success of the Steam Collector’s Edition launch deal. Remedy decided to wait an additional week and extend the deal on the Steam Collector’s Edition.

Despite all of this, Remedy says that fans were still waiting for the announcement of a boxed version of the game, as they wanted it rather than the Steam version.

For fans of Black Rock Studios, change is now in the wind with the confirmed departure of two of the major players from the studio. Game Director Nick Baynes, most recently known for directing Split/Second, and senior producer Ian Monaghan are confirmed as no longer with the company. According to our sources, both were affected by the last round of layoffs at Black Rock by parent company, Disney.

Baynes and Monaghan are forming a new studio to be called RoundCube Entertainment. Baynes will be heading up RoundCube, with Monaghan serving as the director of development. RoundCube has not yet confirmed what their first project with be.

As for Black Rock, about 30 developers remain at the studio and are working on a project that we believe is Disney Universe. If true, Disney Universe is a major departure from a studio that has been best known for racing titles. We have also been told that around 100 employees at Black Rock were hit with layoffs as part of the Disney restructuring.

Regarding RoundCube, we have heard some whispers that it is possible that some sort of IP purchase agreement has been reached that will see RoundCube work on a sequel to Split/Second, which had just started pre-production prior to Disney pulling the plug on the sequel. While this is just a rumor, it would be very interesting to see what RoundCube could do on their own with the rights to both the Split/Second and Pure IP.

With a different publisher quarterbacking the marketing effort for RoundCube, the outcome could be quite different from that of Black Rock with Disney Interactive. Currently, we hear that RoundCube is talking to several publishers, but no publishing deal has yet been reached.

Sony has apparently been looking at the possibility of cutting the price of the PlayStation 3 in the wake of the recent cuts that the company has made to the PlayStation Portable. Sony would like to see another price cut in the future, but no timetable has apparently been set yet as to when it might happen; sources tell us that it is likely that the company will wait to see what Microsoft does with the Xbox 360 and then react or make the move to slash their price this fall as they head into the holiday season.

Most recently the PlayStation 3 has been losing in sales to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the word from our sources is that Microsoft is apparently looking to slash the price on the Xbox 360 once again. The strategy of slashing the price is due in part to help fuel the sales of Kinect, which many believe would sell better if the price were a bit lower. Microsoft has been making gains in Wii owners that are apparently upgrading to the Xbox 360, and Kinect is apparently helping drive this move for this specific crowd.

It is believed that Sony has accepted that the higher price of the PS3 from the start has hurt sales of the console and the company now believes that they have to be very competitive on price moving forward for the console to continue to have additional penetration in the market space.

Analysts that we spoke with over the weekend indicate that they like a strategy where Sony slashes the price on the console to stimulate sales; but they believe that the effect will only be a short term gain, as it would appear that right now Microsoft seems to be in the driver’s seat as far as their ability to drive sales growth for their console. “Actually, I think a price cut would help Microsoft move more product over the long haul this year into the holiday,” one analyst expressed to us.